Thievery Corporation Show at Terminal 5, NYC 2009

Only a group that brings such a DJ mentality to their music and live shows could garner so much enthusiasm from myself. I’ve been a fan of Thievery for many years, but when you hear their albums, “down tempo”, “reggae” or ” dub” are often genres that describe various melodies and styles of their music, however, on the stage, the sound and bass liven the arena and energize the crowd to a fenzey of head bobin to booty shaken no unusual to the funkiest club scenes.

This show fucking rocked as we got there slightly early to catch the dub reggae styling of the dj to the full blown mix of Thievery’s full cast of singers, drummers, guitar/sitarists playing reggae variations, roots style to spacey dub, Afrobeat, Brazilian bosa nova, to up tempo club deep house mix of rhythms and dance beats. The live show included a high-tech video installation and a parade of singers, male and female, from places including Argentina, Brazil, Guyana, Iran and Jamaica. The lyrics were in English, French, Jamaican patois, Spanish and Portuguese, along with a chorus of “Hare Krishna.” The party continued well past the long awaited encore where ushers needed to push the crowd out. This show rocked from minute 1 till the bar was well past last call.

I hadn’t been to the former Club Exit space, and the venue really didn’t fit the vibe of the show, however, the crowd and company made this a well worthwhile show that I’ll recommend to anyone else into any near genre of styles mentioned above.

Photo credit to mis0vibes115 as all mine came out like shite

Steel Pulse on the River

Steel Pulse is one of the UK’s best, certainly the most popular, reggae bands and one of my favorite groups of all time. “Handsworth Revolution” is regarded by many critics (including me) as the a high point of British reggae and 1986’s “Babylon the Bandit” won the Grammy for Best Reggae Album. Their style is very accessible to both reggae purists and mainstream “Bob” listeners of the genre. I’m a big fan of their classics “Ku Klux Klan”, “Macka Spliff”, “Soldiers”, and “Roller Skates” but there’s not a bad track to listen to from any album or live set.

This Wed, I went with friends Russ, Trudi, Mike and Anna to the River to River concert at Rockefeller Park (Battery Park City). We threw out the blankets, popped the coolers and took in a great evening of free SP reggae. Much respect to the organizers, the residents and props to Steel Pulse for a great show. Forward the bass!

One of my Favorite tracks by SP – a must jam to:

Short Cell phone clip of them live… MUCH better to just check them out when you can…

Trumystic Dub styles in Brooklyn

We went out to an abandoned concrete warehouse on Kent street’s unmarked area of Williamsburg industrial section for a Dub show. This place reminded me of the old school underground parties at warehouses broken into or just abandoned. Not much to the space named b.p.m. but they did have a bar serving none other than Brooklyn Lager beers and some wine. You have to know that a 10 PM Dub reggae show is not going to start on time when the place is half full, so we sucked down a few $4 beers and swayed to the big man behind the decks playing old school 45 dub plates… 12:30 rolls around and Trumystic the 7 piece live dub band starts up the skankin ( there were a couple sound guys running around the one foot stage making sure the warehouse didn’t shot circuit and go up in flames). We stuck around for a few hours, danced with a great crowed cheering along for more between the breaks… Good show, I’d recommend the band to anyone into some “heavyweight reggae dub”. Booyakasha!